The Garden Today

For weeks I've been meaning to write an update of the garden's progress, but I don't feel like I have much to report. The garden has been doing its thing with little interference from me. I've pulled some weeds, supported some vines, harvested some veggies, the usual. So, finally, for the sake of keeping a record, here is a general overview of how it grows.

Droopy pumpkin vines on the back fence. (left side)

The weather this season has been less than ideal but the plants are still soldiering on. Those in the squash family seem to be having a particularly tough time. They didn't like the soaking rains early on and now that it's turned hot and dry, they have a tendency to droop during the day. The leaves on the pumpkin vines were particularly limp this afternoon (see above), but they have set fruit (see below).
 

One of a few small pumpkins starting.

The zucchini have had a rough time of it. I put out two plants this spring and both died. When the first one died, I planted a few seeds in its place. When the second one died, I replaced it with a plant from the local grocery store. As of right now (knock on wood) both are doing okay. The plant from the directly sown seeds is actually starting to produce tiny zucchini. It feels like it's late, but I'll take it.

The first tiny zucchini.

The yellow squash are also struggling. One plant seems to be doing okay and has a teeny tiny little bitty squash started. The other is a wilted flattened sad specimen at the moment.

Poor sad little yellow squash.

While the cucumber plants also look overwhelmed by the heat, that has not kept them from making fruit like it's going out of style. We are deep into cucumber season - one of my favorite seasons of the year - with bags of them in the fridge and plans to start giving them away, maybe, if my 2-3 cucumber-a-day habit gets tiresome. 

So many cucumbers.

My husband and I joke that the only thing that loves the heat and humidity here in our river valley is the corn. Ours is no exception. I've never grown decorative corn before so I'm not sure what metrics I should be judging for its success. It was over knee high on the 4th of July, so that's something. It looks happy and we'll see how it goes.

A pretty little insect of some kind on the corn.

Corn and beans make fine neighbors.

Last year we planted the shell beans in the same bed as the corn and pumpkins. This year, with the smaller beds, the corn and beans became next-door neighbors with the pumpkins more down-the-street neighbors. As always, the rattlesnake and turtle beans are happily growing along with little-to-no trouble. The turtles are sending up more climbing vines than they have in the past. I just encouraged them to join the rattlesnakes on the trellis and all seem happy.  

Oh how I love happy beans.

Our other beans have not had such an easy time of it. I got a sack of tricolor beans this year - yellow, green, and purple - and planted the seeds so that I would have two plants of each type. Well, early in the season, something decided to come along and pull up all but one of the plants. I think it was a crow, or other bird. They weren't dug up or eaten, just plucked from the ground and laid on the dirt to wither and die. (sad, no?) I planted more seeds, unsure of which color had survived. The next round of seeds did grow, but not very well. The one plant from the original batch is now producing beans - green ones - and I've decided to be content with that. I'll still hope the others catch up too.

Our bed of Bright Lights chard.

As usual, the chard is one of the stars of the garden. I've only done one picking so far and made lovely chard, mushroom, and goat cheese tarts. I really have to get in there and harvest more. The more I pick, the more it'll produce and it freezes very well.

Experimental tomatoes.

When I was back in the planning phase of the garden last winter, I came across some Burpee direct sow tomato seeds. The promise was that, when planted directly in the garden just before the last frost date, the tomatoes would grow and produce at the same rate as tomatoes that had been started early inside. So, I thought I'd give it a try. I planted enough seeds directly in the garden to have two each of the cherry tomatoes and the beefsteak ones. One of the cherry tomato plants died about a month in but we were able to replace it in the garden bed with a mystery tomato plant growing out of the compost bin. The other tomato plants are doing very well and have started setting fruit. I haven't checked to see how that compares to tomatoes we have grown in years past but, so far, the experiment seems to be a success.

The first of the direct-sow beefsteaks.

I also planted some slightly experimental pepper plants. The experiment, or more properly, mystery, is that I don't know what color the peppers will be. The pack had four different types - red, orange, yellow, and purple. I'm hoping for a variety of colors but we're still in the waiting phase. At least I know that they are not ready to pick until they are no longer green.

One pepper waiting to reveal its final color.

I think that's all that's going on in the garden now. We harvested all the pak choi, arugula, and radishes. We got three garlic scapes that had turned woody before I picked them. Oh yeah! And our peas are currently making peas. 

As for my herb garden just outside my back door, it's exactly what I had hoped for. I can pop out the door, grab some herbs and barely miss a beat while I'm cooking. The deer sampled some of them early on but they bounced back. The dill had some sort of caterpillar infestation, so it's been stripped of nearly all its fronds and flowers. I did let a few rogue dill plants stay in the main garden, though, so I still have them for my recipes. Overall, I'm very pleased with my patio herbs.

My lovely herbs.

And all around the yard, the other plants and flowers are doing their thing. I'm happy to see that the mondarda and orange butterfly plants are still drawing in the bees. I'll have to do a separate update post about the wild seeds I planted over the winter. It's been a mixed bag with them. And then there's the Subaru tree to write about too. And an update on the luffa plants. I guess I do have some stories to tell still even as the garden plods along.

Bee being busy.

More Beans!

I love shelling beans. There is nothing better than sitting on the back porch on a warm, sunny late summer day, listening to '80s New Wave on Pandora, and popping shiny dried beans from their dehydrated pods. It's something that makes me simply happy. Maybe it's because I love doing fiddly things with my hands. Maybe its just sitting still with something uncomplicated to do. I don't know and I guess it doesn't matter. I'll just take the quiet joy.

My legs didn't even go numb this year.

My not-so-attentive bean supervisor.

I planted rattlesnake beans and black turtle beans this year. They are two of my favorites. Both grew fairly well but the beans themselves are somewhat smaller this year. Perhaps it was the lack of regular rain. We only watered the garden a couple of times and the garden seemed to do fine on its own without further intervention.

Dried rattlesnake beans on the vine.

Turtle beans on the plant. (these ones don't really vine)

The rattlesnake bean pods have a curved shape and are tight around the beans. The pods split open fairly easily but the beans need to be removed individually. The black turtle beans have smoother, looser pods. They pop right open and the beans can be removed in one fell swoop per side. I like shelling the rattlesnake beans better but it's fun to have different tactile experiences with them.

Rattlesnakes

Turtles

I wrote a more in-depth post last July about my bean cultivation, etc. - Beans! - so there's no need to go into detail here. I just wanted to make a brief post about the joy I find in bean shelling. You should try it. You might like it.

All the beautiful beans!

 

Beans!

I’ve found that beans are one of the easiest things to grow in my little backyard garden. I didn’t plant any this year but, in the past, I have grown purple, yellow, and green beans to use fresh and frozen as well as rattlesnake and turtle beans for shelling. I tried lima beans and long Thai beans once each. I even experimented with garbanzos back when we were living on the mountain. The plants were beautiful, but they didn’t make a single bean.

My absolute favorite are climbing shell beans. I just love the entire process of planting them, training the vines to a homemade trellis, waiting for the pods to grow full then dry, and finally spending an afternoon on the porch shelling them.

New rattlesnake bean seedlings.

Training onto the trellis.

Bean blossoms.

Looking good!

Starting to dry out now.

Ready to shell.

Beans!

I’ve never planted enough for them to be a staple of our winter diet, but there are usually plenty for a few batches of baked beans or soups. I just used some of our dry beans collected a couple years ago for some good old fashion Boston baked beans.

From the jar...

...into the pot...

...and ready to serve.

Now I kinda feel bad that I didn’t plant any beans at all this year. Oh well. I’ll add them to my plans for next season.

And here's a bunny, just because.

 

The Garden is In!

The 2020 vegetable garden is officially in the ground. I planted all the seeds and transplanted the seedlings on Friday, May 22. It was a lovely warm day without too much sun. As soon as I finished watering in the last of the seeds, a gentle rain began to fall.

First view of the fully-planted garden

My original plan, in light of the global pandemic in which we find ourselves, was to just use seeds that I had on hand from previous years. I was going to call it the “Leftover Garden.” But, I happened to find myself at the big box home store to pick up an item for my job, and saw that there were still lots of seed packets and no one browsing them at that moment. So, I got some. I purchased royal burgundy garden beans, rocket salad arugula, mixed colors swiss chard, black turtle shelling beans, flatleaf parsley, and fernleaf dill to supplement my leftovers. Those leftovers include rattlesnake beans, purple dragon and St. Valery carrots, Chicago pickling cucumbers, oakleaf lettuce, Cascadia sugar snap peas, and black beauty zucchini. Some of those seeds are as much as six years old, so we’ll see what happens.

I decided once again to try growing some of the tomatoes in buckets. Last year, I had troubles with both woodchucks and deer disturbing the plants where they were on our back patio. I ended up moving the buckets into the main garden last year, and then proceeded to ignore them as I was doing with the rest of the garden. This year, I’m trying again with the buckets on the patio, but with an inelegant yet hopefully successful solution. We got some leftover plastic mesh from the building site of my in-law’s new house. I wrapped it around the buckets as a barrier to furry menaces. I hope it works well. I also planted four tomato plants in the garden proper. It will be interesting to see how they do in each location.

Spooky tomato plants! Pink brandywine, black vernissage, black cherry, and red cherry, like last year

We also decided to rebuild the plant teepee in the front yard. Last year we (meaning my husband in this case) tried loofah sponges with surprisingly great success. This year, he planted birdhouse gourds. The seeds are leftovers from several years ago, so, again, we’ll wait and see.

Front yard teepee take two.

In the few days between then and now, all the pepper (Poblano and sweet banana), tomato, and basil seedlings have perked up nicely, and the arugula, cucumbers, and shell beans are sprouting.

Arugula

Black turtle beans

Some squirrels have been digging in the beds, making shallow little round indentations in the soil, but they’re only disturbing the seeds by chance. It’s annoying, but not the end of the world. I have seen some blue jays hanging around in the garden too. Hopefully, they won’t cause any trouble. Never can tell with those tricky birds. They’re too clever for everyone’s good sometime.  

I wish I had a better picture than this fuzzy one, but the jays have been too quick for me so far.

The Garden's Last Hoorah

This last week of chilly weather has made it clear that autumn is upon us. The garden, however, seems to think it is springtime. Or at least some of the plants are giving things another go. The acorn squash plants have put on three new squash, each the size of a walnut. One year, when we were living on the mountain, we actually got two full rounds of acorn squash. The ones in the second batch were smaller and didn’t have a very long storage life but they were still tasty. I don’t think we’ll have time to see these new squash come to full maturity.

Acorn squash, round two.

The squash are not the only plants trying again. The tomatoes have put out a bunch of new blossoms as have the purple and fillet beans. A single new kohlrabi seedling has even appeared. The yellow squash has set fruit for the first time this season. Too bad they probably won’t get big enough to eat. It’s unusual for a single type of plant to fail me several times in one season. The cucumbers are giving it another go too. The peppers are still trying hard as are the eggplants. This isn’t really a second attempt for either of them as they have been very slow to produce the whole time.

More blossoms on the tomatoes.

Cucumbers making one final, pitiful push.

A new spiky eggplant flower

The rattlesnake beans have put on a fresh batch of blossoms as well. I’m really enjoying those beans. I grew them primarily for shell beans but as I picked the dried pods today, I also was able to pick a generous handful of fresh beans. With the new blossoms and tiny beans just starting, I may get more fresh beans before frost comes. As for the dried beans, we got 3 ½ cups from about a dozen plants. I’m not sure if that’s good or not but I’m pleased.

New bean blossom.

Rattlesnake beans to shell.

Beans!

Rattlesnake beans ready to become baked beans or soup.

The garden is apparently not ready to be put to bed yet. That’s okay. It’ll be nice to get those last few beans and tomatoes. We did do some final harvesting, though. We pulled all the carrots and dug the rest of the potatoes. The potato harvest was not overwhelming by any means but the carrots made up for it. 

Our meager harvest of potatoes.

Carrots enjoying some afternoon sun.

The corn and pumpkins are definitely finished. There is no way that either will be attempting a second round. The plants are completely dead. The corn was rather disappointing. I think it was the variety. It made small, irregular ears that grew up through the leaves. Weird. I plan on looking for a different type next year. But I collected the stalks and bound them together to decorate the front of our house. We got two pumpkins but one was chewed on while still on the vine. It still makes a decent decoration with the other pumpkin and a ceramic chicken.  

This corn is finished.

One perfect little pumpkin.

All decorated for autumn.